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Brown’s weather vane politics

Mon., Sept. 5, 2016

Re: Brown admits letter on sex-ed was ‘mistake,' Aug. 30

Brown admits letter on sex-ed was ‘mistake,' Aug. 30

The problem with Patrick Brown admitting it was a “mistake” for his campaign to publicly proclaim he would discard the Liberals’ sex-education bill is that, once again, we have another politician who stands for nothing but expediency.

The only reason he is admitting it was a mistake is that, obviously, his prior stance wasn’t flying with voters. For him to now say: “I wouldn’t do it . . . that’s not who I am,” is fairly disingenuous since that’s exactly who he was a week or two ago.

J. Richard Wright, Niagara-on-the-Lake

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Patrick Brown is flip-flopping on the “new” sex ed curriculum (gasp, a politician flip-flopping!), and he shouldn’t try to gain political traction at the expense of kids? Really? You mean like Dalton McGuinty, the Education Premier, rushing through the “save the children” bill in 2012, imposing contracts on teachers?

Or is it OK for the Liberals, but not the Conservatives? Regardless of who wins at least it won’t cost vast amounts of taxpayer dollars like the couple of seats bought by cancelling gas plants.

Andrew Frise, Orangeville

When the next Ontario election is called, voters in that province will need to remember that Conservative party leader Patrick Brown will say things to get elected that he will reverse should he be elected as premier. Case in point is his recent flip-flop on Ontario’s new sex-education curriculum.

Once in full support of the changes introduced by the Liberals, he now, in the middle of a key Scarborough by-election, promised to scrap those changes. One has to wonder how far off are similar reversals by Mr. Brown on many of the hard-right social conservative policies championed by himself and his former boss, Stephen Harper.

Edward Carson, Toronto

After close to a year after implementation of the updated 2015 Health and Physical Education curriculum, which includes sexual health education, Patrick Brown stated that he will scrap it if elected in 2018. Making this statement right before a by-election was a blatant attempt to politicize this curriculum in the hopes of gaining votes.

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